scottslowe-learning-tools/consul

Running a Consul Cluster in Vagrant

These files were created to allow users to use Vagrant (http://www.vagrantup.com) quickly and relatively easily spin up a Consul (http://www.consul.io) cluster. The configuration was tested using Vagrant 1.8 (both 1.8.1 and 1.8.5), VMware Fusion 8.1.0 (with the Vagrant VMware plugin), and VirtualBox 5.1.

Contents

• consul.conf: This Upstart configuration file allows you to use the Ubuntu service or initctl commands to start, stop, or check the status of the Consul agent running as a daemon. This configuration file is Ubuntu-specific. No edits should be necessary to this file.

• consul.sh: This shell script is executed by the Vagrant shell provisioner to provision the Ubuntu base box with the Consul binary. This shell script was written for an Ubuntu system; edits will likely be necessary for use with a different Linux distribution.

• README.md: The file you're currently reading.

• server.json: This Consul configuration file contains configuration directives to run the Consul agent as a server. This file is copied to /etc/consul.d/server/config.json by the Vagrant file provisioner. The IP addresses specified in this file must match the IP address specified in machines.yml.

• machines.yml: This YAML file contains a list of VM definitions. It is referenced by Vagrantfile when Vagrant instantiates the VMs. You will need to edit this file to provide appropriate IP addresses and other VM configuration data (see "Instructions" below). If you edit the IP addresses in this file, you must also edit server.json to supply matching IP addresses there as well.

• Vagrantfile: This file is used by Vagrant to spin up the virtual machines. This file is fairly extensively commented to help explain what's happening. You should be able to use this file unchanged; all the VM configuration options are stored outside this file.

Instructions

These instructions assume you've already installed the virtualization provider (VMware Fusion or VirtualBox), Vagrant, and any necessary plugins (such as the Vagrant VMware plugin). Please refer to the documentation for those products for more information on installation or configuration.

1. Use vagrant box add to install an Ubuntu 14.04 x64 box for your virtualization provider. I have a base box for the "vmware_desktop" provider you can use for this purpose; to use my Ubuntu 14.04 x64 base box, add the box with vagrant box add slowe/ubuntu-trusty-x64.

2. Place the files from the consul directory of this GitHub repository into a directory on your local system. You can clone the entire "learning-tools" repository (using git clone) or just download the specific files from the the consul folder.

3. Edit the machines.yml file to provide the specific details on the VMs that Vagrant should create. The Vagrantfile expects six values for each VM: name (the user-friendly name of the VM, which will also be used as the hostname for the guest OS inside the VM); vmw_box (the name of an Ubuntu 14.04 base box for the "vmware_desktop" provider); vb_box (the name of an Ubuntu 14.04 base box for the VirtualBox provider); ram (the amount of memory to be assigned to the VM); vcpu (the number of vCPUs that should be assigned to the VM); and priv_ip (an IP address to be statically assigned to the VM and is used for Consul cluster communications).

4. Once you have edited machines.yml (and server.json, if you changed the IP addresses in machines.yml), use vagrant up to bring up the 3 systems that will serve as your Consul cluster.

5. Once Vagrant has finished bringing up the VMs, simply use vagrant ssh consul-01 (where consul-01 is the value assigned to the first VM from servers.yml) to connect to the VM. No password should be required; it should use the default (insecure) SSH key. Once you are logged into the first VM, start Consul using sudo service consul start.

6. Repeat step #5 for the remaining two VMs (consul-02 and consul-03).

At this point, you have a functional Consul cluster running under Vagrant. Note that the Consul cluster is not accessible from outside the VMs, as Consul is only listening on the loopback address on each VM. Enjoy!